


you could really have done worse

by Leamas



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carré
Genre: F/M, Ricki Tarr & his mistress & the tragedy born from such things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 23:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14924507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leamas/pseuds/Leamas
Summary: Ricki Tarr, his mistress & the mother of his child, and another imperfect situation.





	you could really have done worse

Bill Haydon went down and that was the last that the Circus heard from Ricki Tarr.

It was not the last time that his mistress heard about the Circus.

 

Aisha met Ricki about a decade ago, when he beat her brother unconscious. The beating, she thought, was deserved, and she told him that when he came to the next morning with the mother of all hangovers, to accompany the works: two black eyes, a swollen cheek, and a busted lip.

A few days later she came across Ricki, met his eyes, watched as he pushed through the crowd of people and made his way over to the shade, where Aisha was sipping a coffee with some of her friends.

“Should probably apologise,” he said, with a disarming smile that looked like it was trying for _embarrassed_ but falling a bit too close to _charming_.

“You didn’t beat me,” Aisha said with a shrug. “But I wouldn’t bother. It was about time that someone taught him a lesson, throwing his weight around like that.”

“That’s not a very good attitude for a girl to have about her brother.”

“You wouldn’t be saying that if he was _your_ brother,” she said, and they went on from there.

Ricki was a tough man, with fists and a mouth that he was liable to be punched in and night terrors that left him babbling and hysterical. He could hold his drink and he could eat a lot, and sometimes he muddled his way through early courting rituals. Over the next three years he came and went, stopping in for a few weeks and leaving nothing of himself behind, except for the gifts he brought her. He knew some people who did _this_ , or who were going to _that other_ country, or who knew these other people who might hire him. Sometimes, he explained, they’d pay him for what he brought to the table. And what did Ricki Tarr bring to the table? A nasty mouth and those butter-wouldn’t-melt eyes; a set of fists and an architectural blueprint of the social dynamics of a room, stolen with just a glance.

Aisha’s cousin—the only one who still talked to her after her father fell out with his parents—asked if Ricki was going to steal her away from Europe. More specifically, she asked if Aisha _thought_ Ricki would take her there; if Aisha had the inverse illusions of her father, who thought her British mother would be here to stay, instead of running back to England when her parents left. And Aisha did think about this.

What she’d do if it came to this didn’t matter, though, because Aisha knew a thing or two about Ricki Tarr from his hysterical ramblings late at night. She knew about the other women dotted around the world; heard about Rose and witnessed his zealous apologies for what he’d done to her and his cold insistence that he’d do it again, depending on the night.

“But they aren’t like you,” he said once, leaning back in bed with one leg crossed over his knee. “I can have a million of them and I’d still only have one of you, got it?”

 

Then Danny came along, and it looked like that would be the end of Ricki Tarr. A man like that did not have children, even after the child was born.

Until Danny was about three, Aisha hadn’t thought loved Ricki. He wasn’t the man that she thought she would marry, or one who would make a good husband. He liked her, and charmed her, and made her laugh, but he didn’t particularly _love_ her and he had no commitment so to speak of. She told herself that she would not waste her life waiting for him to be something besides what he was.

The first time it struck Aisha that she might be able to love him was when she saw him with Danny, the father of her daughter, awe carved on his face every time he held her, like he couldn’t believe that someone like him could have something to do with bringing about someone like her.

 

When Danny was eight, Ricki came back. “This is it now,” he said. “I’m done running around, playing like that. This is it. I’m here to stay.”

Her first question was, “For how long?”

“As long as she needs me,” Ricki said, pointing to Danny.

Danny was a smart girl, with blond hair and fair skin like her father. Aisha had done what she could to teach her French and now that he was there Ricki finished the job. Sometimes in the hot, bright afternoons Aisha found the pair sitting on the steps of the back porch, speaking in a language that she only half understood.

“Look, your Mum’s back,” Ricki said, swapping to Malay. “Let’s talk so she can listen.”

“I want to talk to you,” Danny said, “so that she _can’t_ listen.”

“We’ll have a lot of that.” When Aisha sat next to them Ricki wrapped an arm around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder. The stubble from his face scraped against her bare skin, and the heat made them both too sticky to hold each other this closely. He didn’t let go, and so Aisha leaned back on one arm and ran her hand through Ricki’s gold hair.

“She’s going to be so smart,” Ricki said. “She’s going to speak three languages, at least. Maybe once you know French I’ll teach you Russian.”

“What about English?” Aisha asked, thinking of her mother.

“She already knows all the English she needs,” Ricki snapped. “String together a bunch of bullshit words that don’t mean _fuck_ , and you’ll be able to speak as well as any of them.”

 

Danny was a brave, like her father, as Aisha learned when Ricki came back late one night, his face the kind of blank that spelled trouble.

“There’s just one more thing that I need to do,” Ricki said, “then I’ll be back. I promise.”

“You’ve never promised me anything in your life before,” Aisha said, sitting Ricki down at the table. She put some food down in front of him and sat across from him. “What happened?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?” Aisha asked. “I’m the mother of your daughter—surely you must think that this concerns me?”

“No, you don’t get it.”

“I don’t think there’s anyone in the world who understands you better than I do,” Aisha said, with more conviction than she’d ever felt before. Because it was true. She knew how to handle him—how to shout back when he was looking for someone to be angry at; how to hold him and accept his apologies, and how to be charmed by him and love him more for the stupid lies that he told about what he did when he wasn’t with her. She never asked him to stay, despite desperately wanting him to—but a man like Ricki was not a man that could be tied down. If Aisha wanted him, she had to make him _want_ to stay. Simple as that. And he’d come back to her for almost ten years.

“I have to go back to England,” Ricki said. “Not for long—I’ll be back. But I need to go. You’re in danger if I stay. You’re in danger no matter what I do.”

So they went into hiding. They left the village where Aisha grew up, where her mother fell in love with her father and broke his heart, where her family lived and loved and hated each other, and where she birthed Danny. Danny walked away from this all into the unknown without looking back, asking questions like, “Are we going to France now? Are we going to Russia?” that Aisha could only shake her head at.

“No,” Danny.

“Then were are we going?”

Aisha wanted to cry. They had money to live on, and Ricki had made an arrangement with a family in a village by the sea to pay for room and board for her and Danny, but that was all that Aisha knew. She didn’t even know why they’d had to leave, or where they were going.

“I don’t know,” Aisha said. “We’ll have to see, if your father comes back.”

“How will he find us?” Danny asked.

“Just wait,” Aisha promised. “He knows where we are. He has his ways.”

 

_Have you thought about what kind of house you want? We could stay by the sea if you want—go back to where you’re from—or maybe I’ll bring you back to Marseille. I lived there a while, before Penang. All this will be covered by the Circus, wherever we go, after what I gave them. So what do you think? Where do you want to go? I’m thinking the sea. I’m more of a city guy myself, but not with a family—and when Irina gets here. Irina. You’ll see—you’ll like her. It will be her and me and Danny, and you. They’re going to trade for her. The Circus will, I mean. Once they’re done with her then they’ll send her out here—after what I did, they have to. They owe me. They owe me big time._

 

Since Aisha started her new job, she found herself coming home to a quiet house with one of the lights on more and more often. Maybe it was because tonight it was late, or because when she stepped inside she saw Danny asleep by the stairs instead of in her room, but before Aisha could think she was standing in the kitchen with Ricki Tarr, looking down at him, breathless. The new house was still unfamiliar territory, and it felt more like Ricki’s than hers; he spent more time there, after all, now that she was working longer hours. He was sitting at the table, two bowls stacked at the far side of the table.

“What is wrong with you?” Aisha asked. There were women who had a lot more to worry about than a man like this. Ricki had an eye for violence and a memory best geared towards a certain type of vengeance, but he had never raised a hand to Danny, or to her. He was reckless and exactly the same man who found her a decade ago and left and came back over the years, but he could be sweet. Being inconsiderate was not the same as being cruel.

“What did I do?” Ricki asked.

“Why is Danny asleep on the stairs?” Aisha asked. “Why not in her room?”

“You’re back early.”

“It isn’t early,” Aisha said. “I am done with work, and—what are you doing Ricki?”

“Me?” he asked, too innocent. “I’m not doing anything.”

“Why are you here?”

“Because I live here,” he said. “I live here, and Danny’s my daughter.”

“Then act like it,” Aisha said. “If you’re going to stay then act like it. If you love Danny so much, take care of her. Stop wasting our time here if you’re just here while you wait for your Irina.”

He said nothing to that, only looked at her. Then stood up, and for the first time since meeting him Aisha felt afraid. Speaking Irina’s name felt like uttering a curse.

Ricki just melted against the table.

“Is that what you think?” he asked, his voice dark.

“You keep talking about your Circus and Irina, and saying that things will change,” Aisha said. It felt like she was pleading with him—something she never thought that she would do, never thought that shew ould have to do. “Think about Danny. You have her now.”

 

By the time Danny was ten she spoke Malay, French, English, and Russian. Aisha’s English was passable; it had been years since she last spoke it with any regularity. What she picked up of French from Ricki and Danny was a joke. Ricki had tried to teach her Russian, but Aisha never got much further than the alphabet. Now that Aisha had Ricki, it turned out that there was just not a lot that he could give her.

“It’s fine, though,” he said. “Irina speaks good enough English. Once she gets here, you’ll see. You two will get on like the best of friends, like sisters. And Danny will be able to translate. She speaks almost as many languages as I do.” He’d never told Aisha how many languages it was that he actually spoke.

Aisha stopped asking when it was that the Circus would call for Ricki; stopped asking when it was that they’d send Irina after him, halfway around the world. It was just his earnest answers when he couldn’t see the inherent cynicism in Aisha’s questions, that made it unbearable to pursue the subject.

“I wonder what Irina will think of us,” Danny said one day, which made Aisha smile briefly; she was getting to the age when it was time to learn that people existed past what they could do for her.

“Do you think that Irina is coming?” Aisha asked, the pride she felt towards her daughter lasting only briefly.

“Why wouldn’t she? Ricki’s waiting for her.” It felt more and more like Ricki was just carving up pieces of Danny to make room for Irina, laying the groundwork for a new life with this mysterious woman.

 

Danny was reckless, like her father, so Aisha shouldn’t have been surprised the first time that she came home with grazed knees and a beaten face, the palms of her hands scraped up with dirty embedded in them. She had a mean face, and she looked to Aisha with a deep-set suspicion.

“Have you been fighting?” Aisha demanded.

“So what?” Danny shot back.

“Then you deserve everything you get,” she said, taking her daughter by the wrist and pulling her over to a chair. She joined her with water a moment later, made Danny hold out her hands so that she could scrub away the blood and dirty.

Danny’s hands were shaking.

“You can’t do this,” Aisha said, suddenly angry. “You can’t just settle your problems like this. Who are you? What’s happened to you?”

“Nothing!” Danny shouted. “But they were saying things about Ricki.”

Always Ricki. Never anything gentle, or affectionate. _Ricki_ or _your father_ , although Aisha knew that he was something else to her. Danny adored him. She believed in him, and worse: she believed him.

“Your father is not worth hurting yourself for,” Aisha said. “So stop this. Don’t listen to what people say about him.”

“I won’t let them get away with this.”

“Let them,” Aisha said. “What does it matter?”

“They shouldn’t say it,” Danny said. Her eyes were clear blue, and beautiful, like Ricki’s. Danny looked more like his daughter than Aisha’s, something that she’d come to dislike.

 

Not many nights later Aisha walked into the bedroom that she shared with Ricki, to find that he was awake and sitting up in the dark. She smiled tiredly, and almost went to sit next to him, to touch his back and rest her face against the space between his shoulder blades when she heard him speak.

“There’s still time,” Ricki said. His voice sounded slurred, like he was drinking; thick, like he’d been crying. How ridiculous, to think about Ricki shedding a tear for anyone. In all the years that she’d known him, nothing had ever come close to breaking him like that. Not nightmares, not drink. The only thing that had ever moved him had been Danny.

The thought quickly pushed itself from Aisha’s head. She heard him say, “I’m here. I’m still waiting.”

Aisha stood in the doorway, wrapping her fingers around the frame. Maybe she should leave. Maybe this wasn’t for her to see. _Now that Ricki was hers, it turned out that there was just not a lot that he could give her._

“There is more that I can do for you,” Ricki said. “I’m going to do it. I’ll get back to them—they can help you. They didn’t before, but what the hell could I do about that? It wasn’t my fault they caught you. It was something else. It was the Circus. They owe me, you know.”

And on, and on, until Aisha felt a lump forming in her own throat. She wanted to look away. Had she ever sat like this? Had she ever bargained with a ghost? No—she was practical. She had enough. She didn’t want to be the sort of woman who mourned, the sort of woman who held out.

It was too late to have not seen this, just like it was too late to not know Ricki, but she didn’t have to put herself through this any longer. She wasn’t his wife. They weren’t in love with each other, and never had been, except as Danny’s other parent.

She heard Ricki as he cut himself off.

“Okay, it was me—so?”

Aisha stayed rooted in the doorway.

“I’m the one who got you into this,” Ricki went on. “But I’m still here. Once they’re done with you, they’ll call for me and then you can come out here to join us. You’ll see, when you meet Danny and Aisha and live out here with us, you’ll see—it’ll all be worth it. You’ll see. You could really have done worse than me.”

 

Her brother never accepted Ricki, but over a decade on he could at least see that he wasn’t going to be getting rid of him anytime soon. They’d come back, the three of them. It was a sad, sorry situation. He’d have preferred it if Aisha came back alone with Danny, widowed or abandoned, but she brought Ricki, too. They went for round two, then round three. These days neither of them ever looked like they ended up on top, but the next day they were always there to reprimand Danny for doing the same thing.

Aisha didn’t know if it was to Ricki’s credit or not that he taught Danny how to win, both when she needed to fight fair and when she had to fight dirty.

“If you do things right, then you won’t have to fight,” Aisha told Danny.

“Ricki fights.” Like that was the end of that conversation.

“Yes,” Aisha said. “He does a lot of things.”

It was late, long after Danny’s father had gone to sleep.

“He thinks that Irina will find us here,” Danny said.

“She might,” Aisha said. “This is his home, now.”

“I don’t think so,” Danny said. “If she was going to, she would have found us already. Like Ricki did.”

What she hoped for her daughter was that Danny would go on to do one better than either of them, and never find herself waiting for something she felt was owed.


End file.
